


Playing the Same Song

by mistrali



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:21:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27235672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistrali/pseuds/mistrali
Summary: Maglor has composer’s block, and he isn’t best pleased about it.For Isilloth, for the Shipoween Exchange 2020
Relationships: Maglor | Makalaurë/Maglor's Wife
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11
Collections: Shipoween 2020 - The Halloween Ship Exchange!





	Playing the Same Song

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Isilloth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isilloth/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this piece, Isilloth! Your prompts were great - I was caught by the idea of Maglor’s wife being a singer as well.

Being a solo performer at Manwë’s feast is a high honour, and Makalaurë, though famed for the beauty of his harp, is still honing his compositions and his singing voice to suit the soaring, ethereal registers of the Vanyar’s ellenárë style. Moreover, the verses must be in a strict pattern: one themed quatrain of twelve syllables per line, three couplets, another eight themed quatrains, each repeating a line from the previous but interpreting it in a different way each time, and one short closing line. It is a world away from the Noldorin ballads he is used to: romantic or tragic, but always full of vivid free-flowing images. Some, if the composer is good enough, can run for up to thirty stanzas. Paring his songs down like this goes against Makalaurë’s grain.

The trouble is, the audition is in eighty cycles of Laurelin, and his mind refuses to write anything that doesn’t sound stilted, ridiculous or nonsensical. Images spring to mind, but none of them suit. He glares at the marble facings of the columns in front of him, and then at the clouding sky, as though inspiration will come to him on wings of lightning.

“How is your composition coming along?” asks Laiquenis, entering the courtyard with two laden plates. She sits down beside him, perfectly composed, in a flowing gown of pale green and white, with lairelossë wound through her golden coif. The aromas of fruit, herbal tea and roast meat are tempting, but Makalaurë fears his mouth is altogether unsuited for any task but singing, at present.

“Dismally. I can’t afford to place fourth or fifth. It would be humiliating.” He sets the harp down, resigned to never writing the Valar-cursed thing to his satisfaction, and sips moodily at the tea.

“Yes, just imagine the indignity if they made you _harmonise_ in the chorus,” teases his wife. “Or sing a duet. Eru forbid!” At Makalaurë’s scowl, she quirks a grin, which relaxes into something genuine, something sweet. “There are other performances, you know, Káno. There’s always next time.”

“Ah, but _your_ performance, my dear,” he tells her, taking both her hands in his, “will be as the fragrance of the lissuin. Subtle, beautiful, faultless, and ephemeral as the summer.” He has not told her who the song is about, or why he is having such trouble perfecting it. This quality is what he most loves about her: her talent, both for music and for overcoming obstacles. She is a moth dancing on the surface of the water, a fish streaking almost invisibly by under the silver current, while he flounders as though caught in a weed-net.

“Golden-tongued indeed for one so melancholy,” she tells him, half-laughingly, and kisses his hand. "Your mother and father named you well. Not for nothing are you one of Tirion’s most renowned minstrels.”

”If they could see me now, they might change their minds. Do you know, last night I dreamt I’d forgotten my harp at home and had to perform the whole song on Ambarussa’s childhood pan-pipe toy.”


End file.
